Graffiti of a Guy Fawkes mask, used as a symbol by Anonymous, pictured on April 6, 2013 in Florence. (Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images)

Individuals associated with the Anonymous collective have published what they claim is stolen personal information belonging to Singaporean government officials and private contractors, in retaliation for the arrest of individuals allegedly involved in 2013 defacements of Singaporean government websites.

Hacker and activist Jeremy Hammond has been sentenced to 10 years in prison and three years of supervised release for his involvement with LulzSec’s 2011 intrusion into servers used by the private intelligence firm Stratfor.

Hammond, a 28-year-old Chicago native, pleaded guilty in May to charges that he conspired in the hack. In the attack, LulzSec and AntiSec hacker collectives stole tens of thousands of credit card numbers and over five million email messages that were later released by WikiLeaks.

Hackers within the Anonymous collective are intensifying their campaign against the Assad regime, leaking information stolen from servers used by gov.sy web domains and targeting further government systems for attack.

Anons behind the ongoing OpSyria recently gained access to servers used by the Syrian Patent Office, hosted at spo.gov.sy, and leaked internal documents. The documents, provided to GlobalPost, included information on patent office operations and product and promotional images stored in the file index used by spo.gov.sy.

With a number of Anonymous factions working under the banner of OpSyria, a clear message of intent is often hard to determine. Those involved in the operation have not sided with any Syrian opposition groups, nor have they declared any alliance with the Free Syrian Army or other anti-Assad militias.

But hackers involved in the operation say they consider all Syrian government systems targets. And they hope to find documents through their hacks that incriminate the Syrian regime for its involvement in a civil conflict that has cost well over 100,000 lives since 2011.

“Finding documents regarding the use of chemical weapons is a top priority but the hacks are a great way for us to show the Syrian Regime, ‘Hey. We're still watching you — and we're going to keep doing this until your people realize that they are our ally,’” said an Anon involved in OpSyria.

As thousands of protesters filled the streets of Phnom Penh for a third day Friday to demand a United Nations investigation into strongman Prime Minister Hun Sen's re-election, individuals within the Anonymous hacker collective remained at their computers to unearth the Southeast Asian government's secrets.

Supporters of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party suspect fraud behind the July re-election of Hun Sen, who has been at the helm of Cambodian government since 1985. They also assert that election officials inflated the number of parliamentary seats due to members of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party after the votes were tallied.

OpCambodiaFreedom is on their side.

“All politicians are rats. They’re animals. Our goal is to leak more government data and send a message to our dictators that we are not simply sitting and watching,” one of the hackers involved with OpCambodiaFreedom told GlobalPost.

OpCambodiaFreedom, launched in June, has so far sought to reveal corrupt election practices. In their seminal hack in July, participants in the operation hacked into servers used by the Cambodian National Election Committee (NEC), just 10 days ahead of a nationwide vote. Claiming that the NEC planned to facilitate voter fraud, the hackers, known as Anons, temporarily disabled the website, defaced it and made off with large amounts of data.

The NEC, which has faced frequent accusations of fraud in past years, has promised to look into local complaints, and has admitted some irregularities in the polling process.

But participants in OpCambodiaFreedom are more concerned with systemic problems that plague Cambodian society, including severe poverty, censorship, corruption and government land grabs.

People demonstrate in streets of Montelimar, southern France, on October 19, 2013, to protest against the exploitation of shale gas and oil. Extracting shale oil and gas reserves through controversial 'fracking' will in future require an environmental impact study, European lawmakers agreed on October 9, 2013, despite opposition this will add to costs and hurt jobs. (Jeff Pachoud/AFP/Getty Images)

Individuals within the Anonymous hacker collective are joining Canadian protesters in a struggle against fracking in New Brunswick that has seen growing violence in recent days.

Anons behind OpFrackOff are lending support to the Canadian Elsipogtog anti-fracking movement, after accusations that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) used racially charged violence against protesters demonstrating against shale gas exploration.

Participants take part in a 'kiss-in' outside the parliament in the Moroccan capital Rabat on October 12, 2013. The event was organised by Moroccan activists in protest at the arrest and trial of three teenagers for 'violating public decency' after posting photos of two of them kissing on Facebook. The offending couple, a boy and a girl aged 15 and 14, and their 15-year-old male friend who took the photos outside their school in the northern town of Nador, were arrested last week (Fadel Senna/AFP/Getty Images)

Individuals within the Anonymous hacker collective have targeted the Moroccan government after the arrest of two teenagers in the northeastern town of Nador earlier this month.

The two teens were arrested after the couple posted a photo of themselves kissing outside of their school on Facebook.

"It involves a teenage boy and his girlfriend. They were arrested on Thursday for violating public decency by posting a photo of them kissing," Chakib al-Khayari, president of the Rif Association of Human Rights, told al-Jazeera.

The Anons also allege that a third teenager was arrested for taking the photo.

"They bring politics to the net, we [Anonymous] ARE politics on the net, we may have to see how hard we can push back,” said one of the Anons involved in the operation.

Kerim Muhammet poses with his two new Apple iPhone 5S models after waiting in line overnight in Glendale, California, on September 20, 2013. Apple launched two new models of the iPhone today, the iPhone 5S, which is an updated version of the iPhone 5, and a less expensive iPhone 5C. (ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)

$13,000 in cash, bitcoins and booze — it’s enough to motivate any hacker to work through the night to crack a piece of hardware or software.

Apple released its new biometric technology as part of the latest incarnation of the iPhone, the 5S, just last week. The company asserts that the phone's built-in fingerprint scanner is one of the most useful and secure methods for protecting information contained on user devices — a major sell in a world of increasing cyber threats.

“Your fingerprint is one of the best passwords in the world. It’s always with you and no two are exactly alike. So it made perfect sense to create a simple, seamless way to use it as a password,” Apple’s Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering Dan Riccio said.

But critics say that claim ignores the fact that no person can control giving away their fingerprints, which mark everything they touch throughout the day. After Apple's announcement last week, one micro venture capital firm immediately heeded the challenge of proving the legendary tech company wrong.

As soon as security researcher Nick Depetrillo spread word online of the prize he was offering for cracking the iPhone scanner — a combination of cash, booze, and the virtual currency Bitcoin — members of Germany’s Chaos Computer Club (CCC), a legally recognized hacker association, sprang into action engineering their way around Apple’s biometric technology.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and Barack Obama at the G20 summit in Russia on Sept. 6. When will they meet next? (Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images)

Brazil is preparing to digitally divorce from the United States as fears of the National Security Agency’s international spying efforts place new strains on relations between two of the Western Hemisphere’s dominant economies.

The announcement followed revelations of NSA attempts to spy on Rousseff and other Brazilian officials, which widened the diplomatic rift between Brazil and the administration of President Barack Obama.

In July, The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald reported that Brazil is second only to the United States when it comes to the amount of communications subject to NSA surveillance.